Thus, his wife's love of display is shown by the rows of useless
crockery in her cupboard; and his own by the rose tree at the front
door, from which he may obtain an early bud to stick in the buttonhole
of his best blue coat on Sundays: the honeysuckle is cultivated for its
smell, the garden for its cabbages. Not so in France. There, the meanest
peasant, with an equal or greater love of display, embellishes his
dwelling as much as lies in his power, solely for the gratification of
his feeling of what is agreeable to the eye. The gable of his roof is
prettily shaped; the niche at its corner is richly carved; the wooden
beams, if there be any, are fashioned into grotesque figures; and even
the "air négligé" and general dilapidation of the building tell a
thousand times more agreeably to an eye accustomed to the picturesque,
than the spruce preservation of the English cottage.

19. No building which we feel to excite a sentiment of mere complacency
can be said to be in good taste. On the contrary, when the building is
of such a class, that it can neither astonish by its beauty, nor impress
by its sublimity, and when it is likewise placed in a situation so
uninteresting as to render something more than mere fitness or propriety
necessary, and to compel the eye to expect something from the building
itself, a gentle contrast of feeling in that building is exceedingly
desirable; and if possible, a sense that something has passed away, the
presence of which would have bestowed a deeper interest on the whole
scene. The fancy will immediately try to recover this, and, in the
endeavor, will obtain the desired effect from an indefinite cause.

[Illustration: FIG. 1. Old Windows: from an early sketch by the Author.]

20. Now, the French cottage cannot please by its propriety, for it can
only be adapted to the ugliness around; and, as it ought to be, and